Inorganic binders are used in an amount of about 4 Gt per annum in the building industry. The composition of the binders has altered in recent decades. Traditional cements based on portland cement clinker and sulfate carriers have frequently been replaced by sustainable, inexpensively producible composite cements which are composed of clinker, additives and sulfate carriers and have been optimized in respect of the use properties.
As a result of the increasing complexity of the binder composition, the required matching of the binder fineness and the use properties, the financial outlay and the time outlay in product optimization and product development have increased. The target parameters in product optimization and product development encompass, for example, the processability, the setting behavior and the development of strength. Finally, the performance of the binder in the main application of concrete has to be examined.
The high materials requirement for examination of concrete necessitates early preselection of suitable binder compositions and suitable binder fineness ranges. The usual physical analytical methods which are employed in the building industry and are described in EN 196 and EN 206 allow analysis of only a small number of samples because of the considerable materials requirement and are also very time-consuming to carry out because of, for example, the test age up to 28 days. Determination of the effect of the many different parameter variations on the reactivity of the binder is therefore very time-consuming.